The Place d'Orleans Mall in Ottawa houses the largest of a several federal government co-working spaces, at almost 9,000 square feet.Kamara Morozuk/The Globe and Mail
Federal public servants are flocking to government-operated co-working spaces after some departments began calling employees back to the office, exposing a fresh fault line in the future of work.
Most government employees had been working from home for the past 2 ½ years. But last month, various federal departments began coaxing workers back into the office, a move that received significant pushback from employees and public-sector unions.
The federal government operates five co-working sites across the National Capital Region – Ottawa and Gatineau, Que. – and four across the rest of the country – in Vancouver, Toronto, Laval, Que., and Dartmouth, N.S. Data obtained by The Globe and Mail from Public Services and Procurement Canada show that, after federal workers were asked to return to the office, the utilization rate of these co-working spaces jumped sharply.
Commonly referred to as GCcoworking, the spaces were launched in 2019 as a two-year pilot program, an experiment in flexible work, with most sites in Ottawa’s suburbs. At the time, the government said the sites gave employees the option of meeting with colleagues in person on remote workdays by choosing one close to home.
According to PSPC data, in September alone the daily utilization rates of all five sites in Ottawa and Gatineau surpassed 80 per cent. Between February, 2021, and September, 2022, the average utilization rate of those facilities ranged from 36 per cent to 55 per cent.
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The government intends to increase the number of such sites as they become more popular with workers. “We currently receive over 100 new requests per week from public servants who wish to sign up to use these spaces,” a PSPC spokesperson told The Globe.
Still, the size of the spaces and the number of workers using them are small, partly because the government still requires that workers practise physical distancing. The largest co-working space, located in Orléans, a 25-minute drive from downtown Ottawa, is almost 9,000 square feet (roughly the size of 15 one-bedroom condominium units) and has just 15 dedicated cubicles or work stations. It also has numerous meeting rooms and open-concept tables and can accommodate about 50 workers at a time under current health rules. For context, there are more than 300,000 federal public servants in Canada.
L'Esplanade Laurier in Ottawa is home to one of the many co-working spaces across the city dedicated to Government of Canada employees.Kamara Morozuk/The Globe and Mail
“Most government employees are still working almost entirely from home, which means that they’re not coming into GCcoworking spaces or the office,” said Michael Aubry, a communications officer for the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), a federal employees’ union. Mr. Aubry believes those numbers will start to climb as departments require that more employees return to a hybrid work model.
Federal employees have been particularly vocal about their reluctance to return to the office, with many asking for a permanent remote-work arrangement and supporting PSAC’s attempts to introduce remote-work clauses in future collective-bargaining agreements. A group called GoC Together, made up of workers who say they are employees of the federal government, launched an online petition this summer to protest the government’s “ad-hoc” approach to a return to the office. It has garnered more than 10,700 signatures, and its signatories contend that decisions to return to the office are rarely “evidence-based.”
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There is no clear mandate stating where federal employees should work. Earlier this year, the Treasury Board, at the recommendation of the Clerk of the Privy Council, suggested that employees should return to the office a couple of times a week but ultimately left specifics to individual departments.
But if federal employees are looking to co-working spaces as a substitute for working from the office, it is still unclear if federal employers are on board with that arrangement. When asked if employees could use co-working spaces as a replacement for mandatory in-office days, the PSPC spokesperson said that would depend on the department. “Some participating departments include work from GCcoworking as part of their mandated on-premise days, and others do not.”
This lack of clarity has even become a subject of debate on a popular Reddit channel for federal workers, r/CanadaPublicServants.
“GCcoworking is being sold to us as ‘you can work there on your WFH days if you’d like,’ or if the power goes out at home on a WFH day,” wrote one user. Another claimed their department has determined that GCcoworking could only be used on work-from-home days, which “really defeats the purpose.”
GCcoworking has 37 participating departments, including Health Canada, Statistics Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency. PSPC said it expects the number of departments to grow steadily in the short term.